Work leave request policy conundrum. What's fair? What works?

parents asking for time off during school holidays should carry more weight than a single person's cruise. Oh hell to the no! +1 to MeghanC, please don't destroy morale and relationships in your workplace by doing this.

A Christian mother of three should never be expected to work Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. And unless your company provides childcare, parents asking for time off during school holidays should carry more weight than a single person's cruise. No. Just no. This causes nothing but trouble and animosity in the workplace. A combination of first-requested and seniority works just fine.

I don't know about what should be the official codified policy, but people need to know they'll be able to book flights and plan things in advance and if you're saying "well... I can't tell you until the people above you know what they're doing" then that really screws them over. As a management strategy it's something you should discuss in advance every year (for Christmas I would say no later than early September) and see if people anticipate it being a problem and see if you can have someone voluntarily say they'll be there over the holidays (or 2 people or however many you need to count as open) so that it's not a problem.

At my (union) job, everyone is give a vacation form at the beginning of the year, with five slots. Employees have more weeks of vacation the longer they've been there. Vacation is allotted by a combination of seniority/first come. You fill in your dates in order of preference, and then if there is a conflict for first choice, it goes to the person who has been there longer. But if there is a conflict between someone's first choice week, and someone with seniority wants it as their second week, it will go to the first week person. So basically, first each person is given a first week choice, determined by seniority, then they go around for the second week with what is left over, and so on. Maybe I haven't explained this too clearly, but I think it's a pretty standard way of doing things, and seems fair.

A friend of mine works a job where they get extra vacation days for working Thanksgiving day, Christmas, or New Years, and they make a point of volunteering to work those days so as to get more total vacation.

Please keep in mind that some folks really don't mind working over the holidays, so although this is a bummer, it may not be as bad as you're thinking. It's quieter and no one is around to bug you; I find it's a good time for filing and other easy tasks that ways get back burnered. I've volunteered to cover Christmas Eve and NYE with no additional comp time received (although I would have jumped at that if it had been available).

At my job there is a two week call for vacation requests for the next year at the beginning of September. People submit their requests and they are decided by seniority. The people that had their requests denied then submit again on a first-come, first serve basis. One smart supervisor I know evaluated the requests as they came in and if she saw what would be an obvious denial she would let the person who's request would be denied to resubmit another one. We also have a big calender on the wall just for vacation requests. That way people can immediately decide if it is even worth putting a request in after that two week call (or, since we are a really close team, people trade vacation days).

Mr MMDP also works in a student facing office; they are expected to take their main holidays when students are off rather than during term. I have never worked anywhere that gave preference to seniority, always first come first served with a broad expectation that there would be at least one senior officer in. Certainly get as much advance notice as possible; in my current office a schedule is circulated before those times when people are likely to want / need leave at the same time, such as school holidays, whereby people can indicate what leave they'd like and the manager can then make an informed decision on the likely level of cover. Yes to using electronic calendars available to view.

At my last job, with a team of about 15, we used google calendars. You'd talk to your manager about your request and they'd look at the calendar. As long as there weren't too many other people out then, you could take the time. We did it all first-come, first-serve. This worked pretty well. However, we were closed over the Christmas/New Year's holiday - you may want a policy just for that week - maybe something like the September deadline suggested above.